boys back home
by varicose
Summary: They're kind of like their father that way- ruining things over and over again. Ian has this feeling like he's about to screw up, but he doesn't know why.
1. Part One

_Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. _

The first time Ian's ROTC squad leader introduces them to the firing range, the guy is all cocky and wanting to impress the kids. He is an ex-Marine with a couple of battle scars, a couple of medals, and he shows them the ROTC issued practice rifle with a gleam in his eye. While he explains the basics, he just decides to take the shot mid-sentence to scare the kids, blowing a quarter-sized hole through the target paper.

Ian is the only one in the whole group who doesn't jump at the sound.

And on the first day of training in the academy, he doesn't finch when firing his own rifle in the range, the one they encourage him to name. He assembles that fucking thing, and does it again and again and again until he knows every click it's supposed to make, and the exact weight of it tucked into the armpit, and until every single piece of the machine is familiar to him. As he spends more time polishing it and staring at it, some kind of fucked up masculine drive causes him to start thinking of the rifle as his dick. Ian knows all about how to work it- he knows where to press and where not to, and slides the clip in like he's fucking it.

He doesn't like hand-to-hand combat as much as he likes pulling the trigger of something. It makes all the tightness, all the fucked-up-ness in his chest expand and pop with the shot.

He first meets Eric in a hand-to-hand exercise, when he's stationed for the first time at an air base in San Diego a year after graduating from the academy.

Most of the boys in his unit want to flood the beaches, and show off their Marine uniforms to the pretty local natives, and some of them want to crowd the resorts and drink mojitos in the sun. There's a nervous energy through the whole base, and when training comes, everyone is hot and itching for action.

Ian is paired up with this one wily black guy, who keeps dancing anxiously from his left foot to his right.

They take the center mat, charge when the whistle blows, and Ian's tackled in the stomach at full speed by this raging, heavy bull. It knocks the wind out of him. Ian tries to wrap his arm around the guy's neck and pull him down so he can get the advantage. Instead, the guy aims a low blow to his abdomen. He's thrown down, and the guy is on top of him, and they are both aware that the guy is hard, and they are both looking at each other in the eyes. It's so much like his first time with Mickey Milkovich that Ian loses himself for a second with want and loneliness. He drives his hips up covertly. The guy raises his eyebrows and kind of smirks before throwing his arm down to flip Ian over and punch him in the back.

Later that night, the guy whose name is Eric meets Ian in the empty bathrooms. They fuck noiselessly after a bit of unsatisfactory handjobs. Eric is hesitant at first.

"I don't want to bottom-" he starts saying while Ian works on the condom.

"You'll like it," Ian says. He squeezes Eric's dick for good measure. He is surprised when Eric actually lets him slowly work him open with his fingers, and the head of his dick. He's good at this, though. Eric starts begging for it after five minutes of cock teasing.

Ian fucks him, and being a dirty boy from the South Side, he growls and tears the condom off, comes all over the right side of Eric's ass, and leaves without offering to clean up the mess.

They eat together and train together most days.

Eric says he has a guy waiting for him back in Detroit, that he feels bad for cheating, but they don't quit fucking or talk much about it. Ian has no one back home.

One night, they follow the academy down to some tequila bar on the beach. Eric buys an armful of beer and three shots. They sit in the sand and watch the rest of the guys get drunk and tackle each other into the water playing drunken beach volleyball. The men in his unit are mostly loud and crass and full of shitty male bravado.

Sometimes, Ian wonders how many of these guys would turn the rifle on him if they ever caught him fucking Eric in the bathrooms.

"Practically know one knows," he tells Eric quietly.

"Knows what?"

"About me. My family does, but no one else."

"You can't bring that shit here, man." Eric takes one of the shots and then hisses, shakes his head. "These Corps fuckers can get nasty."

"We _are_ one of these Corps fuckers."

"Yeah, but would you bash some guys head for wanting to screw his girlfriend?"

Ian smirks. "Fucking breeders."

With a bunch of drunk confidence, Ian tells Eric all about the South Side, and the lengths he went to when he was a teenager in order to keep it all a secret, like fake girlfriends and fake pregnancies. Eric is from a shitty neighborhood in Detroit, he knows all about secrets. They both kind of sigh and shake their heads because it's sad, but they aren't ones to complain, and it's because they always have bigger things to worry about.

They talk a lot about the shit they've done in the past, in their old hoods. Fighting rings, and selling all kinds of shit, and amateur robberies. Eric says that his older brother used to get the brunt of the beatings from their dad, because Eric's brother would hide him and his sister when he came home mean.

Ian tells him how he got the brunt of Frank's punches because he isn't really Frank's son.

They ditch the beach and smoke cigarettes that aren't a part of Marine training regimen. Eric kisses Ian under the boardwalk where they are hidden. He has nice, soft lips.

"What about the guy in Detroit?"

"He ain't here," Eric says. He kisses Ian again, touches his hips.

Ian still feels bad about it.

He already had a part in splitting up two marriages with his cock, and he sometimes turns the word homewrecker over and over in his head, thinking of Kash's kids, and how much Ian's chest hurt when his own mother first abandoned him.

So when they're at shitty motel together on their day off, Ian tells Eric that he has to figure his shit out if they're going to keep doing this. Eric leaves without saying anything, with a clenched jaw, and Ian wonders if he should have kept his mouth shut. He remembers what happened the last time he opened his mouth (he remembers tending to his broken ribs that night six years ago, trying to keep it together, thinking that everything was better when it was left unsaid. He remembers Mickey's fist colliding with his cheek. He remembers when Mickey answered him, _I don't fucking love you.")_

But he meets Eric a few days later. He looks sorry, and sappy, and sad. He tells Ian that it's over, that he's broken up with whoever was in Detroit. They kiss for a while in a stock room closet between meal time and duty, and they don't even fuck. Ian doesn't think he's ever kissed someone and not fucked them afterward.

Except Mickey.

All the sneaking around makes him feel like a teenager again. He's 24, but he hasn't gotten over the deep-seeded adolescent fears that Terry Milkovich buried in him.

Two months after, the San Diego air base announces that they will deploy Ian's unit to the base in Afghanistan. The guys in his unit range in varying degrees of manic excitement. They party until they're sick and talk about the weaponry that will be at their fingertips, and future missions.

Eric and him don't stay up talking about it, they don't say anything about it at all because this is the job, and this is what Ian signed up for, and for five years he's been working toward this trip overseas. He's surprised when dread comes along with the excitement and the sentiment. He blows through three clips at the firing range, waiting for the feeling to pop, pop, pop, but it never does

They get to go home for a few weeks before they ship out. Eric decides to stay in San Diego because the whole reason joined up was to never go back home again.

He lets Eric top the night before he leaves for Chicago. Ian only switched sides a few times, once with Kash, once with Lloyd, and with Eric, who's not as good as he claimed. Ian prefers to fuck, and to not be fucked, but he's supposed to be in some kind of relationship with Eric, and these are the things he's supposed to do.

Ian doesn't like when Eric says, "I love you" while he was coming, even though it's probably just a side effect of the orgasm. His insides go solid and he doesn't say it back.

He gets home on a long flight, eating peanuts and getting tipsy on dixie cup cocktails served by the stewardess.

As soon as the wheels touch down on Chicago Pavement, Ian feels a knot untie in his stomach.

Fiona and Debbie and Liam wait for him at the gate, and it's only a year that he's been away, but he swears Debbie looks more like Monica than ever. They wrap all their arms around him and Fiona cries like she always does when Ian comes home from a long stretch. They smell like what he misses- stale nicotine and remnants of breakfast. He picks up Liam and swings him under his arm like he used to with Carl and Liam laughs his ass off.

He asks FIona where Carl is, and she looks solemn for a moment, saying,

"He's holding down the fort." She quickly changes the subject. "Lip's gonna be here tomorrow."

Home is just the same, home is home. He feels like he's fifteen again, sitting at the counter in front of Fiona as she fries eggs for him and he pours bagged cereal into a kiddie bowl.

Fiona tells him that Carl hasn't emerged from the basement since yesterday. Ian can hear muffled, angry screaming metal coming from under the floorboards.

He goes down there, into the dark cave that Carl's pretty much lived in since his voice started cracking. There's odd posters on the walls and hardly any light comes through the grimy window. Ian swears he can still smell the meth lab that blew up down here when Grammy was alive.

Carl always had a thing for the basement. He turned the musty, dank place into a pig stye of paint, and paraphernalia , and mess, and art. A few years back, after he almost got sent to juvie for assault, Carl's therapist suggested art as a kind of anger management, and he's pretty good at it. He makes these grotesque sculptures and paintings. The shit kind of disturbs everyone, pictures of blood and fucking and death, but at least Carl isn't out hitting kids with bats and fucking around with meth.

"Carl," he calls over the music.

And there is no reply, but Ian sees Carl with the cigarette shoved angrily between his lips. Carl slings a rifle over his shoulder, but Ian quickly pieces together that it's only a paint ball gun. A big, poorly made canvas is propped against the workshop table. Carl sucks on the cigarette, the longest possible drag, and the smoke must burn all the way to core, but Carl smokes more than any of them. A pack a day since he was fourteen.

"Welcome home," he says all passive aggressively. Then he fires a few shots at Ian's chest, which sting and stain his shirt green. Ian steps over to the docking station to cut off the music while Carl hits him with two more shots in the back.

He curses and turns to his baby brother, who isn't much of a baby anymore, being taller than him and with a deep, angry voice. Carl's jaw is clenched tightly, which means he's pissed off, holding all his shit in like the Gallaghers tend to do. He shoots a green paintball at Ian's shoe next.

"You done?" Ian asks.

"You're gonna have to get used to getting shot, right?" Carl says, and he turns back to his canvas, and stubbs out his smoke in an overcrowded ashtray.

Ian's stomach curls.

"I'm gonna be fine," he says.

"Whatever." Carl picks up a can of paint by his feet, dips in his whole hand and throws a bunch of black on the canvas. "Can you turn my fucking music back on?"

He's no stranger to this opposition from his family, who would rather see him working as a transit cop instead of as a Marine. Now that his first tour is approaching, he knows they might try to say and do anything to convince him to stay home.

Carl looks like he's going to start throwing punches, so Ian leaves, pressing play on the docking station and plugging his ears.

Ian spends the rest of the day letting Liam show him the costume he's going to wear in the school play, and helping him recite his lines. Debbie says she's back with Hank, who Ian personally beat up two years ago over Christmas because he broke Deb's heart. Fiona keeps stopping him to hug him tightly against her chest. He thinks it's amazing how she can crush his ribcage despite how spindly and thin she is.

"What are you going to have to do over there?" she asks at dinner time. Her eyes are low and they shift every now and then.

"Depends. Different ops. Different things."

She keeps asking him these questions; how long will he be gone? How many tours will he have to go through until he can come home? Will he be able to call anytime? Are the higher-ups good at their job? Who's going to be watching his back?

He can't find a way to explain that it he will not be in danger, because of course, he will be in danger. He thinks it's better to play it down to Fi and the kids, that they might not worry as much if he can make it seem less like a war zone, and more like a job.

He can't bullshit Lip, though. He never could.

Lip comes home from MIT late the next night, when Ian's asleep in Liam's room. Something shakes him awake, and he sits up fast, sees his brother hovering over him. Blue eyes and a smirk. He's hardly changed.

"Come on, lets get a drink," Lip whispers.

Ian smiles, he throws his arm around Lip and they go out to some remote place under the El with a six pack of Old Style, just like old times. Lip doesn't ask him anything about the tour.

"You seen Mandy lately?" Ian asks him. Lip is in Chicago more often than Ian, because he mostly works on his thesis off campus, and because his part time engineer work helps keep Fiona afloat. Ian asks about Mandy, but he's thinking about Mickey, and wonders if he's got the balls to ask about the other Milkovich.

"Yeah, man. Yeah...she's, uh, got another one in the oven."

Lip looks regretful every time they talk about Mandy. He fucked it up when Karen came back, with all the shit that went down when they were kids, when their tightly knit group fell apart. Lip watched history repeat itself when Mandy got knocked up with a kid that wasn't his.

They're kind of like their father that way- ruining things over and over again. Ian has this feeling like he's about to fuck up, but he doesn't know why.

Lip slugs his beer. He runs his hand through his hair. They are quiet for a long while, just listening to the sounds that the South Side makes in the night. Ian's overwhelmed with nostalgia, being here, being back.

After a while, Lip says,

"Bring me back some of that Afghan Kush, alright?"

And Ian laughs, saying,

"Maybe I'll bring back an opiate poppy for Frank."

The El approaches overhead and it roars. Ian always loved living near the El tracks because it's this thunderstorm that comes every fifteen minutes, and it sometimes covered up the sound of Monica's yelling, and he would lie in bed counting the seconds until the next train came. He would fall asleep most nights waiting for the sound to roar past.

A few days later, they have a going away party for him at the Alibi Room. Carl even comes because there's the promise of free booze, but he doesn't speak to Ian or even acknowledge him, and Fiona tries to shake some cooperation out of him. He doesn't budge and never has. Kev and V bring the kids to play with Liam, who drink apple juice from pints, and Frank stumbles in somewhere around the end of the night, already two sheets to the wind as always.

Ian gives his father a hug, inhales the sickly familiar scent of alcohol that's seeped out of the pores, and pats him on the shoulder even though Frank has no clue what they're celebrating.

When Ian's had a few, and he feels social and warm in his belly, he calls Mandy's house to invite her out. He hates that they aren't like they used to be, that he doesn't call her or text her as often as he promised, that they even ignore each other on Facebook.

A man picks up. At first, Ian thinks it's her boyfriend, or her baby daddy, or whatever, but when Ian says nothing, the voice is suddenly familiar,

"I can hear you breathing, fuckface."

It's Mickey and Ian's heart jumps into his throat. He says,

"Mickey?"

"Who the fuck is this?"

Ian goes quiet. The connection feels tenuous, his eyes sting suddenly, he wasn't expecting this, and hadn't planned for it. Who the fuck is this? He wants to just say, _"It's me, Ian Gallagher. You have to remember._"

"Is Mandy there?"

A pause. It's a long, thoughtful one where Ian's heart hammers and he hopes that Mickey isn't hearing it in the receiver. He hopes Mickey hasn't recognized his voice. At the same time, he wants Mickey to say his name, to say, "Gallagher, is that you?" But the silence goes on and on until finally, he says,

"She's out."

The line goes dead and Ian hangs up.

He's outside with a cigarette that's burning down to the filter.

It's suddenly very quiet.

He gets why Carl is so angry. He gets why Fiona's eyes are more sunken than usual, why she's obsessing over every detail of his tour. He gets why Lip talks to him with this sold sadness in his voice, why Debbie wants him to take her to a real club tomorrow night, why Liam started crying when Ian couldn't stay to finish their Lego castle today.

He ships out in a week and he could die.

And Ian realizes that might be the last time he ever speaks to Mickey Milkovich.

_A/N- Part two should be up soon_


	2. Part Two

_Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. _

The night before leaving, Lip and Carl have a screaming match in the kitchen. It wakes everyone up, but Ian meets Debbie's sleepy body in the hall tells her to go back to bed. Fiona slips past him, still putting her shirt on, and down the stairs like the place might be on fire, like she's a fireman and it's her job to extinguish it.

"Keep your goddamn voices down," he hears her hiss. And Lip mutters something back, but Carl yells,

"Tell him he can't tell me what to do, he doesn't even live here!"

"What the hell is this about?" Fiona says. Ian thinks he knows. It ebbs away at the barrier he put up in his stomach, a floodgate that keeps in all the sick things he doesn't want to feel. Like Carl's indifference and MIckey's voice that sounded the same after five years.

"I'm going to Becca's," Carl says slowly.

"No you're not, you're staying here and saying goodbye Ian in the fucking morning." Lip's voice is uneven and mad. He yells the last bit.

"You're...not...my dad." Carl says it through his teeth, and Ian silently climbs down the stairs because he doesn't want them to see him.

"Carl-" Fiona tries, but Lip interrupts her.

"No, I'm your bother._ Ian_ is your fucking brother."

He makes it down the rest of the stairs to see them in kitchen.

And Carl doesn't notice that Ian's there when he spits,

"_Half_-brother."

Fiona makes a noise, but Lip hits Carl in the jaw as soon as he says it. He stumbles back and knocks something over, and Fiona shouts,

"Hey!"

But Carl shoves Lip into the refrigerator, sending magnets to the floor, and Debbie appears behind Ian. Carl doesn't hit Lip back, which is surprising, because Carl will hit anyone at any given time. They've all had their fist fights with him in the past, usually ending with blood and apologies, and a cigarette peace offering. But Carl just turns to flee out the back door before Lip can grab him again, and that's when he catches Ian's eye. It's too dark in the kitchen to tell what's there. But before Ian can say anything, he's slammed the back door, and the room is met with an absurd silence.

Debbie puts her hand on his shoulder and tells him that Carl didn't mean it.

Ian can pull apart a pistol and clean its insides, check every mechanism for its faults. He can take apart a rifle to find a malfunction, and get it back in shape before the Officer's whistle blows. He doesn't know what the malfunction is here, in Chicago. Something feels terribly wrong.

Fiona tries to clear the corners of her eyes, but she just sniffles loudly and gives herself away. Lip looks sorry because he's always been too impulsive and he's always been the one to throw punches. Ian has been the one who runs away when he can. He's a bit like Carl that way.

"You shouldn't have hit him," Ian says after a minute. Lip runs his hand over his entire face with that look of exhaustion that no one so young should have.

They dissipate back into their beds. Ian can smell the joint that Lip lights to calm his nerves, and he can hear Debbie giggling with Liam upstairs, and he can see Fiona chew on her lip as she worries about where Carl is and if he'll come back. It's just Fiona and him in the kitchen. It's late, late, late and he has an early day tomorrow, but he won't be going back to sleep because his nerves are all alight as he thinks about the loose ends that he hasn't tied up yet. It's like he's seven years old again and struggling to tie his shoes while Lip and Fiona race ahead of him.

"Carl will come around," Fiona says. "You know how he is...he's just...worried about you."

"Are you worried about me?"

Her face melts for a moment, her eyes all shiny in the dim streetlight through the window.

"Yeah."

And he wants to say, _"I'll be fine,"_ but this is not what fine feels like. She loses her calm and starts to cry first against the counter, and then on Ian's shoulder. She hugs him so tightly. Ian can't remember Monica ever holding him as tightly as this; her limbs were always so light and loose on his shoulders. He can't remember Frank holding him ever. Fiona tells him that she'll miss him.

He squeezes her back because he misses her already.

It starts with the notion of finding Carl, but he never finds Carl, just the footpath through the allies and streets that lead to the Milkovich house. It's still there next to the El with a decoration of beer cans and trash in the front. Except now there's Fisher Price toys and a kiddie pool in the yard.

He could say he's just here to pick up some weed, but he doesn't even know if Mickey's still dealing, or if he's even inside, or why he would come knocking at midnight on a Tuesday. The lights are still on.

He hasn't stepped foot on this property in six years. Part of him thinks that as soon as he does, Terry Milkovich's ghost will find some way to finally kill him. Terry died and left Mandy the house sometime around Ian's second year in the academy. He remembers hearing Lip say the words, "Terry Milkoviich got shot," and he remembers feeling a terrible, absolute nothingness when he expected vindication or at least a little joy. He wonders if it's how Mickey felt.

It's been six years, and he can still taste the tang in mouth that Mickey's body always left. Sometimes, the memory gets muddled with the taste of blood, but only because fucking him and fighting him were so close.

he goes up the rickety steps and knocks, all in one breath and one fluid movement. He can't afford to be slow. He's waited six years for this courage.

The kid who comes to the door, who swings it open slowly with short arms, is not Mandy's daughter, who Ian remembers from photos on Facebook, but an unfamiliar boy. A light is on in the room behind him and Ian's glad he hasn't woken anybody, but then again- growing up in this neighborhood, bedtime was always just a suggestion.

"Um," he starts. He wonders if he should ask for Mandy. The kid says,

"You don't got a soul."

Ian stares blankly and the kid says,

"Darek said gingers got no souls."

"I don't-" Ian tries to speak, but a louder voice from inside cuts him off.

"What the fuck you doing answering the door?"

He comes out of nowhere.

He isn't any taller, maybe a bit broader, maybe has a new tattoo on his neck. His eyebrows are arched up the same, his hand still says "FUCK" as he puts it on the kid's shoulder and pushes him out of the threshold. He's still Mickey Milkovich, and his voice has the same lazy Chicago accent when he tells the kid to go find his cousin.

Ian's chest might burst and spew bad memories everywhere. He wants his rifle and a target dummy to blow away.

"I thought you moved to fucking California," Mickey says when the kid is gone.

Ian didn't think this far ahead, so he's stuck on the porch without a thing to say. Finally he looks around at the houses down the street and says,

"I thought you moved out of Canaryville."

Mickey's face has more lines in it than there used to be. He has a nearly healed black eye. He wipes the corner of his mouth nervously.

"You lookin for Mandy?"

Ian could say yes, and he could have a cigarette and catch up with her like he should, but instead he shakes his head. He says,

"You wanna get a drink?"

And for some reason, Mickey chuckles with that laugh that's still so full of malice, and he says,

"Fuck it."

They get a mickey of cheap whiskey at the 24 convenient store two blocks away, where the Kash-and-Grab used to be. Ian listens to the bell ring at the top of the door and he spots the walk in freezer. He nods to Mickey who kind of rolls his eyes. Ian decides that if he could, he would drag Mickey into that freezer and lock the door for old times sake. He sort of expects Mickey to punch him in the face for even insinuating, but they go back out onto the street and sidestep the homeless guy when he asks for a smoke, and Mickey is pleasant enough. He can't shake the memory of that beatdown, when Mickey's elbows and fists were relentless and loveless and he doesn't know if six years is enough time to heal those fucking wounds.

Outside, they say nothing at all, and the air is as tense as it is hot. He's not surprised when they make it to the dugout, and cross the dying, empty field together with conviction in their steps.

Ian asks about the kid who answered the door, even though he pretty much knows exactly who the kid is.

"Yeah," Mickey says. "Joey."

"Where's your wife?"

Mickey spits on the ground, takes a swig, swallows it without a grimace.

"I ain't seen that bitch in four fucking years, man."

As they get steadily drunker, Ian learns all sorts of things that shatter the mental image he's held of him all these years. He works at the Chrysler plant now- deals a bit of speed on the side, but nothing harder. He's staying with Mandy for a while to help her catch up on the bills because she's shit at being on her own. The kid lives with him, always has, and that's the last thing that Mickey says about it. Ian can't figure out how Mickey is so different now, so much less crazy and hectic and angry, but he does get angry when Ian says,

"So you're like, what? A single dad now?"

"I'm not having the DFS fuckers on my back," he snaps.

Ian shrugs. He smiles a little because it's so odd, even though it's been six years and people change in six years. He might have changed in these six years, too. He hasn't looked in the mirror long enough to tell. After a while, he tells him,

"I'm shipping out in a few days."

Mickey looks at the ground.

"Yeah, Mandy said."

Ian takes a drink to build the uncomfortable fire in his stomach. Mickey asks him,

"So what the fuck you want, anyway?"

He's always been to open with Mickey and he's spent too many hours of his life thinking about him. He wants this to not feel like a dying wish, because he doesn't want to die, but soon he'll be in the desert with real enemies instead of target dummies, and he's kind of drunk, and he can't help but put his hand on Mickey's hip.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," Mickey says under his breath. Ian shakes his head, snakes his hand to the top of Mickey's fly and tries to unbutton him. He thinks suddenly of Eric in San Diego, but it's another world away.

Mickey's jaw sets and he looks Ian dead in the eyes when he reaches under his shorts and grabs him. His cock is the same as he remembers.

"I wanna fuck you," he whispers.

Mickey's eyes are closed and his head is tipped back, and for a moment he looks as young as he used to, so Ian tries to get his own belt undone.

But Mickey stops and pushes Ian away.

"Not gonna happen, firecrotch."

He's missed that nickname so much, he could cry.

"Why not?"

"Cause I fucking said so, that's why."

Ian finishes the rest of the bottle, throws it to the dusty ground.

"Might be your last chance," he says. "What if I'm killed in action, huh? How are you gonna feel then?"

"What makes you think I give two shits about you?" Mickey asks, and Ian shakes his head.

"You would have slammed the door in my face if you didn't."

He's pushing and pushing, which is probably the worse thing you can do to someone, but it's what Ian's always done to Mickey. He doesn't care that he's got a boyfriend in San Diego, and that Mickey isn't really Mickey anymore. He doesn't care if Mickey fucks him or kills him, he just needs the goddamn release.

"Gallagher." He sounds real tired, worn out.

Ian grabs his face, presses his lips down on Mickey's lips that are slack. He feels them open after a second of harsh breathing, and tires to make it last, but Mickey rips his head away, and their foreheads stick together with sweat, and they smell like whiskey and spit.

"Just one more time," Ian says. "Before I go."

Mickey's chest shakes with laughter that doesn't escape his mouth, and after a second, he's kissing him back, grabbing his crotch, and Ian takes his ass in his hands. Mickey has been half-hard this whole time, something that Ian secretly is proud of, because he could never get over how much Mickey liked having Ian's hands all over him.

It's as easy as it used to be, turning him over and tugging down his pants, and pushing inside him without any protest. The warmth makes him groan, and he presses his whole body against Mickey's back, fucking him and fucking him and fucking him like they're sixteen, like they have no children at home and no status in the Marine Corps.

Mickey hisses his name when he reaches around and grabs his dick. He makes Mickey Milkovich whimper like this. He makes him come quickly, and gets off almost purely on the sounds. They only last a few minutes.

And after, they sit back against the fence, trying to catch their breath, adjusting their belts. Now he waits for Mickey to make some kind of scared, homophobic slur because some old habits die hard, but others die harder. Only Mickey doesn't say anything when it's all quiet in the dugout.

After a while he does say,

"Fucking little league, man." He wipes his nose with his hand. "Joey wants to go out for them this year. Can't fucking lift the bat above his head yet."

"Maybe you should enroll him in ROTC."

Mickey laughs and shakes his head. He looks at Ian and Ian wants to kiss him, but he doesn't.

"Don't get your ass shot off over there," Mickey says. And Ian smiles because he knows that Mickey has always cared enough. Maybe not as much as he should have (_"I don't fucking love you"_), but he cares enough. Ian says,

"You should go home to your kid."

Mickey puts his dirty fingers on the back of Ian's neck and it feels like he's going to kiss him goodbye, but he only squeezes. It makes Ian shiver all the way down his spine, stopping in his stomach with everything else. Then Mickey just goes.

Stupid of him for thinking he could draw out a little closure.

Ian just decides to add Mickey to the list of people he has to stay alive for, but then he thinks, Mickey was never really off the list.

Under the El, he finds Carl sitting against one of the big, graffiti covered pillars. He is even drunker than Ian. He has broken his skateboard in two, probably did it himself out of rage. Empty bottles around him are drained and smashed into pieces. Carl puts his head in his hands, crying, crying, crying because his skateboard is fucked. Ian promises to get him a new one, and Carl hangs his head off Ian's shoulder.

"Don't worry about it," Ian says. He wraps his arm around his brother's waist to pull him up. Carl only get emotional when he drinks. There's something shaking about seeing him cry.

"Okay," Carl says.

He leans on Ian all the way home.


End file.
